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USC Asia Architecture & Urbanism Study Abroad ProgramThu, 02 Jan 2014 21:33:39 +0000en
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The Hong Kong Market Placehttps://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/the-hong-kong-market-place/
https://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/the-hong-kong-market-place/#respondThu, 02 Jan 2014 21:33:39 +0000http://uscaau.wordpress.com/?p=2416The city of Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated urban centers on Earth. Located on the Kowloon Peninsula, it is surrounded by water in the east and mountains in the west. With real-estate scarce, Hong Kong builds wherever it can. But the city’s true groundwork is not founded on steep hillsides or reclaimed land: it’s founded on money. Hong Kong is also Asia’s financial powerhouse. It accommodates the highest concentration of banking institutions in Asia and the world. As affirmed by Hong Kong-based architect and urban designer, Laurence Liauw: “If you are not about business, you do not belong in Hong Kong.”

Walking down the streets of Hong Kong is certainly a feast for the senses. Whether its the smell of deep-fried squid, the sound of double-decker buses, or the visual stimulus of never-ending billboards, everything is trying to grab your attention. Everything is trying to sell you something.

Perhaps most interesting of all is the social interface between consumers, producers and the physical environment. Much in the same way as unrelenting vendors pursue potential customers along the street in hopes of selling a product, one is relentlessly bombarded by visual stimuli that appear to encroach on every morsel of our personal space.

To technology theorists Scott page and Brian Phillips, the idea of urban interface provides a way of exploring new territory for software design by juxtaposing the development of the city with that of information technology. As described by Page and Phillips, the physical embodiment of the city (its buildings, its streets, and its infrastructure) can be thought of as hardware . Correspondingly, the city’s software is a combination of the social, political, and economic forces that capitalize on the physical city. From this perspective, urban interface serves as a medium through which both the software of the city (anthropological) and the hardware ( geometrical) interconnect.

In the city of Hong Kong, the urban interface between both forces exists in various forms. Stores and market centers in the city commonly develop along areas with significant pedestrian traffic. The Hong Kong Mid-Levels Escalator and Walkway System, for instance, receives approximately 55,000 daily users. It is an occurrence within the city that has prompted the redevelopment of a once dilapidated area and an example of the city’s software influencing its hardware.

Likewise, the recognition of the city’s infrastructure, in this case Hong Kong’s limited restriction on billboards, has gone so far as to impact the market tactics of small business owners in Hong Kong. Rather than pushing the same objects/information to a 7.1 million person audience, shop owners target each individual separately–either through lights, food samples , pamphlets, and even small conversation. Billboards are used as a means to present a product while the promise of a socially stimulating experience is used to draw customers in. In essence, everything is tailored to make consumption easier. Vendors are conveniently located at all subway entrances (in which case metro signs become a type of billboard for all food vendors). Gold fish are sold wholesale along entire streets–as advertised by large billboards.

The visual stimuli within a city is in many ways the presentation of information. Thus, as the amount of available data increases, so too does our reliance on tools to navigate this context. Small business owners in Hong Kong understand this. To facilitate the consumption of goods, billboards are placed strategically along busy thoroughfares as means for users to navigate through shopping districts and locate the product of their choice with ease. For this reason, one needs not hunt for a jewelry store in Hong Kong, ever-lurking billboards depicting jewelry will always find you.

Looking at Shanghai’s economic growth over the past decade in concurrence with the high-rises of the Pudong district, one can cannot help but wonder whether the architecture is a result of the market or the market a result of the architecture. The answer is both.

Shanghai is under a state of rapid development. Within the course of one generation Pudong reinvented itself from an agrarian swampland to an economic powerhouse. At the forefront of this transformation is the development of new high-rises meant to accommodate a growing population of residents and investors. Shanghai is quickly moving toward modernization, an idea that has sought to change the character of the city as a whole.

Historically, one of the driving factors in the idea of modernism is mechanization. Before the advent of industrialized machinery, diversity in products and information was easy to find. As the economic market developed, however, it became more dangerous for companies to invest on products that yielded different outcomes. As a result, companies favored concrete systems that endorsed uniformity. Thus, the era of the rationalized systems began.

The rationalized system was not only safe for investors, but served as a means to classify, standardize, and organize everything. It is in this process of classification that the fundamental nature of products, architecture, and cities became disjointed. The field of architecture, for example, was subdivided and categorized into its components. Consequently, urban planning, construction, and civil engineering became separate fields of study; leaving architecture under the catalog of stylistics.

The district of Pudong differs greatly in scale and land use to the old Shanghai model across the Huangpu river. It is the resultant of separate fields of interest working together rationally to provide a product. Correspondingly, the end product appeals to neither a practical form or a stunning function. What is perhaps most important to note is the secondary effects the rationalized system that built Pudong has influenced.

The rationalized system is simply the confirmation of the everyday choices that have already been made for us. In essence, the cycle is a simulated one: People develop needs which are superficially met by the system, which then develops more needs further perpetuating the cycle. The boundaries between life, media, and the consumer culture have been engineered and merged seamlessly into a single entity which is the everyday. Everyday activities such as eating, shopping, and consuming of information, are the underlying organism that keep the system in motion.

Fundamentally, the rationalized system is one that is constantly trying to quantify itself and does so through the everyday. Until recently, cities formed as a result people gathering and trading goods. Today, city formation is based on economics. Thus it stands to mention that Pudong was not only created to accommodate a growing middle class, but also as means of demonstrating the market’s presence in the city of Shanghai and the world.

]]>https://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/pudongs-market-presence/feed/0luisv2013The Hidden Cityhttps://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/the-hidden-city/
https://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/the-hidden-city/#respondThu, 02 Jan 2014 21:19:35 +0000http://uscaau.wordpress.com/?p=2396Taking a brisk walk alongside a bridge that connects the Yamanote line to Ueno Station, our group stumbled upon a market district. The locals call it Ameyayokocho, which roughly translates to “candy shop alley.” The market is home to over one hundred and eighty shops, which sell products ranging from fresh food and fish, to clothing, electronics, and of course, candy.

Due to time constraints, our visit to Ameyayokocho was short and speedy, but enough was presented to us to entice another visit. Upon researching this unique part of Tokyo it appeared that little was written about this informal market. The reason for this being that Ameyayokocho is an urban byproduct that developed without planning. In other words, it shouldn’t exist.

Ameyayokocho is a part of Tokyo that we discovered only by sheer coincidence, but nevertheless a major part the city’s urban character. What is perhaps most exciting is that Ameyayokocho cannot be found on any maps or Japanese search engines, nor is it simple to find on foot. It is a jewel reserved only for those willing to get lost.

The process of discovering (and later rediscovering) Ameyayokocho is what Michel de Certau describes as reciprocity. De Certau argues that all cities, much like language, communicate a meaning–one that can only be understood by engaging the city.

City engagement requires the exchange of dialogue between both the architecture and the people; the formal and the informal; the geometrical and the anthropological. When the two are mutually in sync, reciprocity occurs. Likewise, the more a user disengages a city the more homogenous it becomes. In such case the idea of understanding the city is rendered to a meaningless whole rather than a series of separate components acting together to create one.

Ameyayokocho is anchored in an area between the geometrical and the anthropological. It is an informal market that sprouted out of a necessity for affordable goods within an expensive and extremely dense residential community. It is an unplanned part of Tokyo that exist below a major railway line and adjacent to residential high-rises.

As architects we have an obligation to tactically engage users into a space, even if our means are geometrical. The relevance of architecture within a contemporary system structure lies in the intentionality of our actions. Architects must begin to read the city as a poem rather than a book. We must give in to the idea that the city can be read in different ways, that it is acceptable for users to get lost, and that there is something beautiful about the informal.

Driving from the airport, located on the periphery, to Xian’s walled center I was once again struck by the immensity and monotony of construction creating urban China. The huge array of tombstone, residential towers was mind numbing. We have witnessed such developments throughout China, but the construction bursting the edge of Xian reached a new level. Maybe it was the pollution and its proximity, towers being constructed adjacent to coal fired power plants, at distances which I would have before thought inconceivable. Also it could have been the juxtaposition; the construction of such towers is emphasized by the building height limitations imposed on the walled center. When standing on the wall, the verticality and force behind market driven development pushes as closes as it can to the center creating a new wall, dwarfing the original. Such development stresses the physical cost that urbanizing requires but it also alludes to a transformation of people, of their goals, needs and sociability. Urbanization’s most visible effect is seen in its physical manifestation, but urbanization , driven by the dominant influences of market forces and globalization, is just as much about the sociological and psychological changes necessary to transform a diverse rural population into urbanites, integrating them into the global consumer pool. Architecture or at least building types play a pivotal role in the transformation, both physical and psychological, occurring in China.

The transformation, psychologically, is closely tied to issues of surveillance and systems of control within architecture. Juxtaposition has been a topic of discussion throughout our travels and it is pertinent in this case as well. There seems to be a strong shift/change in regards to surveillance when comparing pre-open door typologies to post-open door. More specifically, typologies before the opening, such as the Hutong and Shikumen as well as agrarian villages, seem to be driven more by social surveillance, as a result of bottom-up, need-based development. Typologies post open door, seem to approach qualities of surveillance and social control from a top-down organization, guided by the market. This results in a shifting and complex relationship between the desires for anonymity and the need for communality within the Chinese population. Walking through developments that may be considered bottom-up, one is struck by the density and overlapping lifestyles that occur. There is a beauty to it but also detractors. The shikumen neighborhoods of Shanghai become self-sufficient microcosms within the greater city, incubators of small-businesses and informal-economies. Yet at the same time I have come into contact with the reoccurring critique, that qualities of social surveillance are too strong. The inability to escape the watchful eye of one’s neighbor is reminiscent of communist China, when everything was supposedly shared.

In contrast the tower apartments completely demolish the notion of bottom-up surveillance and self-sufficient development. Surveillance is not a quality that develops over time but is now imposed from the onset. From guarded gates to cctv cameras, the building’s future is sealed. The ability for change overtime is done away with, housing complexes become islands. In these complexes privacy is attained, but at the loss of community, as in high-rise complexes across the globe, it is very common to not even know the people living on the same floor. Though from an architecture standpoint this typology is so easy to critique it cannot be denied that is desired, attaining a tower apartment is viewed as practically the most important investment a Chinese citizen can make. After discussing this topic with various professors and students I have begun to realize that the definition of home ownership here is far different then my own. Under the consumerist wave that the economic reforms brought, the home has become a complete financial product, a source of wealth generation.

I must admit that coming to China I had formed some preconceptions, though unfounded, they still made their way into my mind. The most prominent and most embarrassingly stereotypical was luckily the first to be challenged, almost immediately, through my Shanghai experiences. The notion centered on the idea of control. China due to its communist past, and the still centralized government’s reputation, I imagined the population to appear slightly repressed upon arrival. My first journey into the city dismantled this view and replaced it with the opposite impression. The lack of control is most striking; the urban citizen is allowed to operate with a high level of autonomy, using the street as a truly public realm. From street vendors clustering around subway exits to temporal wet markets, the Chinese street has led me to question what constitutes freedom within the urban realm.

The level of public access that the Chinese urbanites have in the utilization of their streetscape is amplified by the juxtaposition of my past experiences. The United States, of course, is the counter pole of this activity but even the Japanese street wanes in comparison to the activity of China. The key difference between China and the other two nations seems intrinsically tied to levels of development. As a nation develops the occurrences that have made China so immensely interesting on this trip tend to disappear, the street becomes regulated, excluding uncontrolled activities. This trajectory of development seems to allude to a contradictory process: that as the city modernizes, moves toward a service economy, it becomes less free. Its inhabitants become more restricted, choice is diminished, regulation is imposed and enforced. Yet if one continues to compare and contrast say a city like Shanghai and Tokyo, it becomes apparent that freedom does not have a singular definition within the city but is something much more complex.

In Tokyo the population has given up a large amount of individual freedom and expression for the freedom of the larger whole. The immense conformity of the population, has allowed for an amazingly efficient, economically driven society to develop. But with the sacrifice in self-expression comes many benefits; most people can afford the consumerist lifestyle that drives society. Additionally the city is made democratic by the clockwork efficiency of its transportation system, creating a physically accessible city.

China’s current urban freedom, amplifies the opportunities of the individual. As a result of rapid urbanization the population must be given a large level of autonomy else the city would cease to function. The wealth distribution is too unequal to force the entire population to attain their goods and services from large, commercialized, global brands. The question now is how will freedom be defined as the Chinese city continues to develop. Given the statements of Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee concerning “human-centered-urbanization” and a “rebalancing of the economy,” the future is somewhat uncertain. Though human-centered-urbanization sounds as though it should support the microeconomic activity of the individual the rebalancing of the economy focuses on the need for the population to become more consumerist centric; therefore it could be argued that the Chinese government’s definition of freedom is that to consume. Yet it is more than just general consumption, for that occurs already , microeconomic activities are of course tied to consumptive needs, yet I believe consumptive centric development focuses of the creation of consumptive desires rather than only needs.

]]>https://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/how-free-is-your-city-or-my-inability-to-define-freedom-within-the-urban-realm/feed/0mdenhartImageProducing the Cityhttps://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/producing-the-city/
https://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/producing-the-city/#respondThu, 02 Jan 2014 05:21:29 +0000http://uscaau.wordpress.com/?p=2471China has proposed to build a multitude of cities during the present decade. The process for the vast majority of all those cities has been relatively similar. A slick video is usually created at Tongji University showing a multitude of buildings rising out of beautiful green fields. These videos are usually used to gain foreign direct investment with are displayed next to extraordinary growth figures and flashy power point presentations. Once investment is gathered the cities are built at an incredibly rapid pace. Architectural models are mass produced in factory like settings where even the model makers are becoming tired of the repetition of their work. The resulting cities are usually successful for the developers. However, their final appearance greatly differs from the initial renderings. The new cities often stand in stark juxtaposition to their surroundings. Sometimes the juxtaposition is a set of pink tombstone apartment buildings next to agrarian villages. Other times the new cities appear as European style villas with factory smokestacks looming as their backdrop. Sometimes the cities evolve into vibrant communities driving business, and culture. Other times the new cities lay empty, although fully purchased, and slowly disintegrate into China’s postindustrial landscape.

A group of residential towers under construction near Shanghai

The mass production of the urban space in China raises questions about its impact. French philosopher Henri Lefebvre critiqued the creation of urban space saying that, “space is a product […] the space thus produced also serves as a tool of thought and of action […] in addition to being a means of production it is also a means of control, and hence of domination of power.” This critique begs to ask the questions who are the producers and user of urban space in China, and how will it benefit the greatest amount of people? Ultimately the answer to that question may be presently unclear, and will probably not be fully answered until the new Chinese cities can be studied a few generations in the future. However, certain elements of this city making can be analyzed in the present.

One crucial aspect of Chinese Urbanization has been the villagers, who most often become the end users of the development. Rural villagers receive considerable compensation for their land that is developed into a modern apartment block or shiny office campus. The villager compensation system is sometimes a rag to riches story. A family that previously had relatively nothing could receive housing and income in the form of rental payments through compensation. This income contains the potential to support several generations. Other times the compensation received by the villagers is of little value when compared to the destruction of their home and business that they had worked to develop from the ground up. While the villagers may be the final end user of the urban space, they are often disconnected from the producers.

If the production of space is thought of a product it becomes essential to understand who is responsible for the production of that product. Initially foreign architects held a large amount of influence over architecture in China. Iconic projects such the National Theatre, National Stadium, and Beijing International Airport were all designed by foreign architects. Xintiandi, a Shanghai development that has created a model for adaptive reuse of existing architecture was also developed by foreign architects and has been reproduced throughout China. However, Chinese architects are increasingly playing a role in the creation of cities within their own country. URBANUS, a Shenzhen based architectural practice has designed many urban areas around China and functions at a highly critical and analytical level. The practice of city making in China also gains increased importance as Chinese developers seek out opportunities around the world. Developer China Vanke has developments in Hong Kong, Singapore, and America, while Dalian Wanda has begun to develop in International cities such as London.

All of these factors build upon one another to spread insight into the nature of Chinese urbanization. While the users and producers of Chinese Urbanization functions as two very different groups, they have the potential to work together to create effective space. Only time will tell if the production of urban space China acts more as a tool of control, or of opportunity.

SR

]]>https://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/producing-the-city/feed/0samrampyWisdom in Footstepshttps://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/wisdom-in-footsteps/
https://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/wisdom-in-footsteps/#respondThu, 02 Jan 2014 05:16:16 +0000http://uscaau.wordpress.com/?p=2220In modern society any person will most likely pass through many cities before their death, and each one imprints a specific memory of place unto the person’s mind. A traveler’s memories may be small glimpses of buildings, or streets. Perhaps a person might remember their experience of a specific monument or cultural institution. However, if a person has spent a significant amount of time in a city their memories most likely will be different. They’re more likely tied to the significant parts of their lives that took place in the city. Perhaps it’s a specific place a person shared times with family or a loved one. Perhaps they’re strongest memory is of a place a friendship grew, or a place they experienced pain loneliness or anguish. The importance of these memories come not from the only the physical surroundings, but instead it is derived from an essential relationship between life, and the physical environment.

Throughout the time I have spent in Shanghai, my conscious memory of the city has grown slowly, but now seems to have created a small network of memory associations, and systems of personal knowledge. The knowledge of city can grow before a person ever touches foot in it. My knowledge of Shanghai grew first from a series of maps, historical events, and series of architectural elements. This information started building a timeline of physical morphology. My understanding grew about how the city evolved from a series of economic and political forces. Geographical elements such as the Yangtze River or political events such as the concession to the French and Mao’s revolution all have left a physical legacy on the city. The timeline created static glimpses, almost like snapshots, of the city historically up to the present day. The time in-between the snapshots was subconsciously filled in with assumption made from my personal understandings. However, the minute someone steps foot within the city, they begin to gain an understanding of the true knowledge of place. It is an understanding of how life infiltrates between the systems of roads, subway, and buildings. It is a dynamic knowledge that has a relationship to the static physical context, and thus it also has a relationship to history. The only way to gain insight into the knowledge of space is through immersion into the city. However, the knowledge of place is continuously changing. It is constantly evolving and being shaped by both local and global forces. The knowledge of place is concerned not with the specific nature of singularities, but instead by relationships and hybrids of space. It is from these relationships that the knowledge of place gains importance for architects and urbanists.

For an architect or an urbanist to successfully design for a city they must have knowledge of both physicality of a city, and the anthropological element of the city. The value of the anthropological element of the city comes from the understanding of the way people interact with the systems of the city as a whole. In Shanghai, city life tends to spill out of buildings on to the sidewalks. For an architect to design to the full potential, they must have an understanding of this anthropological instance. However, the physicality of a city still plays an important role. The grid of the streets, transit routes, and program dispersion are have important impacts on the city, however they gain true intelligence when those concepts are merged with anthropological elements.

SR

]]>https://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/wisdom-in-footsteps/feed/0samrampySystems of Cultural Mass Productionhttps://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/systems-of-cultural-mass-production/
https://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/systems-of-cultural-mass-production/#respondThu, 02 Jan 2014 05:06:56 +0000http://uscaau.wordpress.com/?p=2211Spectators from around the world gather constantly to observe a phenomenon unique to the human settlement that has been objectified as the city skyline. Many of the spectators may be drawn to image of the skyline due to the immensity of the scale. Others may be drawn to the phenomenon as an acknowledgment of man’s ability to control, and create his surrounding environment. However, the power of the skyline has been tamed and domesticated. The spirituality of the city skyline has been simplified to a collection of copied symbols and pasted onto countless mugs, t-shirts and posters. Furthermore, the inevitable system of commodification of the city skyline may be observed in countless of the world’s many cultural artifacts. The system of cultural commodification and production may be indiscriminately ruthless, but within the system emerges intelligence and power.

Culture has become a production industry of massive scale, which has permeated every modern society around the world. The industry functions just like any other globalized industry of mass production. Fashion, art, and design have all been copied and produced at high volume, and now the average man may derive enjoyment for the same cultural product around the globe at a reasonable price. Shopping districts of the world’s great cities: Tokyo, London, Paris, Shanghai, all have been infiltrated by the same international fashion brands. The same movies will be consumed around the world by an international base of spectators. The world’s cities may have unique symbols, but ultimately all of the skylines consist of an undulating silhouette of steel, glass, and concrete. Behind all of these observations the economic forces have commoditized culture for mass consumption.

The system of cultural production has impacts far beyond just clothes or movies. It impacts our immediate built environment. Hand picking from a collection of personal observation, I would bring light to the example of Dafan Village. The southern Chinese village emerged from a homogeneous collection of Chinese industrial settlements as the actual production center of culture in the form of paintings. While the production of culture may often be shrouded within the obscurity of production, this example becomes clear as the actual physical production of a cultural product. Society’s notion of painting as tied to a specific cultural moment of time and place is in clear juxtaposition with the act of recreating the art on a Chinese factory floor. As Adorno writes in The Culture Industry, the consumer has demanded the reproduction of cultural commodities, even though they realize they are imitations. However this example is intriguing because, out of the initial act of cultural production Dafan has in fact produced its own unique culture. Dafan’s culture is tied not to the creation of new art, but instead glorification of the act of cultural reproduction itself. As a result of the creation of Dafan’s culture came a means of wealth for the artists, and eventually economy led to the commodification of the village’s culture in the form of urban gentrification. As seen with many instance of cultural production Dafan has been regenerated not as a site of production, but as an epicenter of consumption. Consequently, as often seen with systems of mass production a gap has again emerged between the consumption and production of culture in Dafan.

SR

]]>https://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/systems-of-cultural-mass-production/feed/0samrampyTo Plan Efficiently is to Plan Proactivelyhttps://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/to-plan-efficiently-is-to-plan-proactively/
https://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/to-plan-efficiently-is-to-plan-proactively/#commentsThu, 02 Jan 2014 04:52:16 +0000http://uscaau.wordpress.com/?p=2231Adjusting to China has taken some time, to say the least there are some deep nostalgic feelings longing to return to Tokyo. From personal observations, Shanghai is not as uniform as Tokyo in a sense of having a clear manner of going about the everyday, yet the city as a whole works as a cohesive unit. There is an existing chaotic order that allows the city to function everyday. The bottom up agenda gives lead way for a loose mindset, meaning that there are no set rules, but rather there is much more responsibility for the individual to conclude each and every decision. When crossing the street, oncoming cars are not scared to challenge the pedestrian, whereas in the States, it is law that pedestrians have the right of way. Interestingly, the city facilitates people’s way of life.

Shanghai holds a strong market force driven by solely the economy. Following a westernized marketing strategy where marketing culture has become prominent. Routines are facilitated by the city where there is an awareness of what is happening and done in our daily lives that then facilitate what we do and how we use the city. In Shanghai, there is a chaotic order but there is still no difference in how actions are played out. The generic fabric is dilapidated but this is in due part because Shanghai is a few decades old. The city works the same way here in Asia, but differently in the West. Walking down the street may be an easy task as it does not impact our ability to complete it. For example without using a car for transit, the task at hand can still be done while in Los Angeles, the distance of programs makes it difficult; the systems facilitate the ability to tap into certain programs due to the infrastructure makeup. These programs impact our lives, as the ability to obtain something can be a simple arbitrator. The advanced technology facilitates our mobility as the methods of transit allow to physically and mentally go to another place. To physically experience the act of travel assimilates “the real”.

The importance about programming in a shorter more decentralize way is to keep a sustainable marketing agenda. Here in Shanghai it is possible to make a living on the streets as a street vender. The concept of a mobile program is plausible. Equivalent to the food truck craze in the United States, the theoretical engagement between the behavior of the city and the social prove that there is no need for a required infrastructure. Arguably there is more social and cultural engagement between the vender and customer. This idea of mobile programming allows room for open dialogue between the two also blurring the existing boundaries of the formal and informal infrastructure. The streets are a part of the social infrastructure where the activities begin to blur the public and the private merging the activities. The systems of the social are no spectacle but simply just life.

10/19/2013 Paula M Narvaez

]]>https://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/to-plan-efficiently-is-to-plan-proactively/feed/1paulanarvHistory and Innovationhttps://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/history-and-innovation/
https://uscaau.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/history-and-innovation/#commentsThu, 02 Jan 2014 04:42:42 +0000http://uscaau.wordpress.com/?p=2193Culture is constantly shifting; there is a dynamic exchange happening. Kyoto is a cultural repository of culture in Japan. With a panoptic stance, Kyoto can be seen as an implicating and contaminating culture within Japan. The modern mixed with the traditional, displays the deep-rooted sense of history held within the city as well as how the city is dealing with the introduction of new wave of architecture into their building fabric. Shrines still stand in their original site, authentic and genuine, reverend by the locals. The notion of time reflects looking back into history allowing the culture to grow and become more of a form of knowledge as it becomes engrained into the locals. The involvement of innovation, where the gained knowledge is become instilled, detaches itself from a myth-based society due to the notion of the culture seizing to be factual but rather temporal and changeable. Looking forward becomes the base principle of that permanence within society. Once we become part of history, today we live in the present while tomorrow has its historical meaning, it has past so immediately we would not consider it in the past but eventually it becomes ancient. Culture can only be there as part of history if in fact we accept that culture is involved in the innovation process. The culture is constantly at a loss because it is caught between the searches for the reconciliation within our minds of our presumptions of Japan. As we settled into Shinagawa, our brief home stay, we were fully immersing ourselves into the everyday lifestyle in Japan. We each developed a daily routine and acknowledged our surroundings that became something familiar to us rather than foreign and unknown. We get into the idea of the “everyday”; we take the same path and every aspect of the city now has an embodiment of the thought of non-thought.

With technology, a detachment from traditionalism, a society is perceived as conformist yet it operates entirely on the other spectrum. The necessity is that we as participants need to transcend to embrace the contraction and the complexity which will offer more in holding onto the myth based agenda where we can observe and analyze. A city like Paris is encapsulated in a historical sense where the people are completely content with their city yet frustrated that there is no push forward; it is historically relevant to the people. As culture moves forward in time through the idea of modernization, it is simultaneously becoming less unique. It is rendered to become homogeneous where essentially once the discipline becomes monotonous or specialized, exposure to anything else becomes very slim. As we move towards society of spectacle, we must question whether a culture is being used in the process of creating the spectacle. We must ask ourselves why is each neighborhood made to be highlighting a certain aspect. Culture is a commodity of how society came to be a spectacle, and now that we have this knowledge, it is difficult for society to work outside of this notion.